


Feline So Sad

by EmoreeBlue



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir Needs a Hug, Akumatized Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Episode: s03 Chat Blanc Spoilers, F/M, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Post-Episode: s03 Chat Blanc, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Vomiting, ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:01:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24515059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmoreeBlue/pseuds/EmoreeBlue
Summary: Tumblr Prompt: How about Adrien remembering some or all of the events of Chat Blanc but thinking they're a bad dream? (Or a good dream, if he only remembers dating Marinette and/or Marinette being Ladybug.)The moon was broken?
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Nino Lahiffe, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Plagg
Comments: 9
Kudos: 115





	Feline So Sad

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks again, @silverwysteria, for the prompt! Gave me a much needed jumpstart :)
> 
> Enjoy!

Adrien awoke in a cold-sweat, gasping for air. 

The moon was broken. 

Green eyes looked around frantically; he was in his bedroom. 

But the moon was broken? 

Throwing the blankets off his legs, Adrien ran to his twelve-foot windows. Beyond the gates, Paris milled about in a perfect spring day. The sun shown and faces were smiling as Adrien's Kwami floated to his shoulder.

“AHHHHwwwww,” Plagg yawned just as obnoxiously as any other morning. “Bad dream?”

At that, the blonde finally felt the deep frown on his face and consciously forced his muscles to relax. He could feel his heartbeat begin to slow as the realization dawned on him that it had, in fact, been a bad dream. “I guess,” Adrien sighed, giving the bright sun one last confirming glance before he turned away from the windows.

“Must’ve been vivid; you were tossing and turning all night,” Plagg snarked as the Kwami began rifling through his cheese cupboard.

“Sorry, Plagg,” Adrien said solemnly, picking up a change of clothes, headed for his bathroom. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something in his dream had been very wrong but, as he tried to remember, it slipped through his grasp like smoke. “Must not have been important,” he commented, still distracted, “I can’t really remember it.”

Adrien ignored the grumble from the mountain of cheese wheels as he slipped through his bathroom door. Pulling off his night clothes, he clung to the only thing he could remember from his dream; the destroyed moon. What could have caused such a thing, and why did it make him feel so sick to his stomach?

Sighing again, Adrien looked at his reflection in the mirror. His eyes started at his stomach and wandered upwards until they met in the glass. They looked tired, detached, and a little crazed; like the fear Adrien had felt upon waking was lying in wait to bloom again. As the blonde continued to stare into his own eyes, the sick feeling in his stomach intensified, and he was no longer staring at green human eyes, but light-blue cat eyes.

Adrien gasped again, adrenaline spiking, blinking frantically. Green. His eyes were green, just like his mom’s. Adrien sucked in air and gripped the edge of the countertop. It felt like his heart had been restarted. Never wanting to see that icy blue gaze again, Adrien pushed off the marble a little too forcefully and stalked to his shower, trying to swallow the bile that was rising in his throat.

Adrien took a steadying breath as he stepped in, hoping the immediate rush of cool water would rid him of whatever lingered from this nightmare. He stopped, hand around the cool metal of the tap, muscles flexed to turn it. The teen wondered if the broken moon or the terrifying eyes were anything more than a nightmare. No alarm was raised in Adrien's memory, and yet his stomach and chest screamed at him to run. He tried to shake off the terror as he finally turned the spout, cold water pouring from the shower head. 

As soon as the water touched his face Adrien was rocked with another wave; a drowned Paris flashed before his eyes, cold water spread out beneath him. He collapsed to his knees, clutching at his chest as his vision began to tunnel. He sucked in the wet air, begging it to quell the fear within him. Adrien desperately tried to pull the vision back but, like the others, it was gone. But the acid in his stomach and pounding heart rate remained.

The water had begun to warm after its initial shock, but the warmth only felt suffocating now. Adrien crawled, gasping, from his shower. He pulled himself weakly to the toilet and without further ado, emptied the contents of his stomach. As he heaved, the teen was vaguely aware that Plagg had appeared to worry over him with gripes of how gross humans could be, but Adrien was too distracted to care.

Finally, his stomach stopped raging and he was able to flush the toilet. Adrien’s heavily lidded eyes found his Kwami as the little God tried to pat his moist forehead dry. A knock at the door interrupted the weak smile Adrien was trying to offer Plagg, and they both went rigid. “Your breakfast will be served in ten minutes, Adrien,” Nathalie advised through the door.

“Thank you, Nathalie,” Adrien called back, surprised at how normal his voice sounded. Over the rush of the shower, he couldn’t be sure if his father’s assistant had left, but there wasn’t a reason she would stick around.

“You’re still going to school?!” Plagg whispered in disbelief.

“I’m having a panic attack because of a dream. That’s no reason to stay home and waste my day cooped up in this house.” And with that Adrien pushed himself up and braved the warm spray, letting it ease the tension.

__ __ __ __ __ __ __

The shower had done Adrien some good and so had the rest of his morning, that proceeded as any other. His father hadn’t joined him for breakfast and Adrien hadn’t even been upset because that just meant that his dream had been just that, a dream, and there wasn’t a reason for the panic.

His completely normal morning continued as he got in the silver company car and was driven on the usual route to Collège Françoise Dupont. The completely normal morning continued as Chloe, Nino, Alya, and the rest of the class greeted him the same way they always had, and he sat in the same seat in Mlle Bustier’s class. Adrien could finally feel the last remnants of fear escaping his body as the door burst open to reveal a wild Marinette Dupain-Cheng. The bell rang a half-second later, and the relief on her face made Adrien’s heart warm. Marinette blew her bangs off her forehead as she made her way to her seat.

“Good morning, Marinette,” Adrien offered as Mlle Bustier closed the door and walked to her desk.

Marinette’s wide blue eyes met his and a smile began turning her lips. “Good morning, Adrien,” she whispered, sliding into her seat. As suddenly as the fear had come on before, an overwhelming affection bloomed in Adrien’s chest as he heard his name fall from her lips. He gasped, finding he couldn’t look away from his classmate.

“Dude,” Nino chastised, nudging him with his elbow.

“Agreste, Adrien?” Mlle Bustier seemed to be repeating. 

Adrien didn’t have to look to know all eyes were on him as he awkwardly burst, “Present!” 

There were snickers throughout the room, reminiscent of his first day, but his embarrassment was short-lived. “Dupain-Cheng, Marinette,” Mlle Bustier was calling out.

“Present,” the tinkling voice called from behind him and Adrien’s shoulders tensed. Why was his heart swelling? Why was he feeling like he…loved Marinette? He wanted to turn around and see her sweet smile. He wanted to hold her hand and hug her and kiss her! Why? Not that there was anything wrong with doing any of that with Marinette, she was an amazing girl, but he’d only ever felt that strongly about Ladybug.

At the thought of her, all others came to a halt. He needed to talk to Ladybug. The nightmare, the continued feelings that he couldn’t control, the thought stirring in the back of his mind that there was something more to all of this; all of it could be answered by Ladybug. Adrien didn’t know how he knew it, but nothing had ever felt like more of a truth.

__ __ __ __ __ __ __

After an agonizing day, Chat Noir made his way across the familiar Paris rooftops. Adrien could barely think about Françoise Dupont without feeling the fear, anguish, love, and embarrassment war in his chest. He’d been in and out of the bathroom all day begging his anxiety to calm as the panic crawled up his throat. Apparently, seeing his father’s face in an article triggered that reaction now. Adrien couldn’t daydream about being Chat Noir without the thought of his cataclysm creating a crushing wave of sadness. He’d excused himself from yet another lesson, only able to hold in his sobs before closing the empty locker room door. 

His worst blunder had come when Marinette had been laughing on the benches in the park with her girl friends during lunch. He’d been walking by with Nino, headed back to the school, when Adrien had stopped dead in his tracks. The bluenette hadn’t noticed him, but her laugh had caught his attention, and her smile had secured it; the way it took over her whole face, making her cheeks go a little pink and her teeth sparkled in the sun.

Adrien had only realized he was moving when he’d heard Nino squawk behind him, but the overwhelming urge to talk to the girl had kept him moving. Adrien still didn’t have the foggiest idea what he had planned to say to her, but it was something about love and that’s the conclusion Adrien came to when he’d stopped in front of Marinette. Her name had fallen from his lips but, to Adrien, someone at the other end of the park could have said it. Marinette must have heard it just fine, because she'd looked at him like a deer caught in headlights. Her friends had shoved her towards him, and Adrien remembered how his heart had swelled when she stumbled towards him, her hands landing on his chest. She’d righted herself, and gave him an awkward smile as her hands fisted at her sides.

And in that moment the affection had given way to embarrassment. Whatever spell he’d been under had broken and an image of Ladybug flashed in his mind, spinning her yoyo, looking at him like he was the enemy. What had he been thinking? “You look nice today,” was all he’d managed to supply as he shuffled away with a confused Nino.

The memories fueled Chat Noir forward as he leapt towards one of the higher office buildings in Paris. The walls were windows top-to-bottom and it had a white helipad at the top with a landing zone that matched the sky. He landed at the top breathing heavily. Ladybug would already be bounding across the rooftops to join him if she were going to be on time to meet him. Before taking off for their usual rooftop, Chat gazed out over the skyline to see if he might be able to spot the red suit. 

The sight that met him was not the Paris he had just sped across. Instead, it was filled with blue from ground to sky, the water meeting the horizon as far as his eyes could see. Only the tops of Paris’ tallest buildings dotted the sea in front of him. Chat’s heart seized painfully and he dropped to his knees once again, his tears already dotted the roof’s edge. As he tried desperately to breathe normally, Chat dared to look back over the skyline, and the Paris he had come to know stretched before him once again, as if the flicker of hell had been his imagination. But after everything he’d seen and felt today, Adrien knew better. Plagg hadn’t been much help, simply worrying over him, but that was why Chat Noir was on his way to meet Ladybug.

She knew. Of that he was sure. Taking a steadying breath, he pushed his legs out and sat with his feet dangling over the edge. He didn’t trust his body to take him any further at the moment. Perhaps his lady would be her usual late self today. With a final steadying breath, he tried to think of something that might get his heart rate under control…“Little kitty on a roof all alone without his lady,” he began to sing.

“Chat Noir?” Ladybug’s voice called from behind him. He turned to see her standing in the middle of the helipad but her eyebrows were taught and her limbs were slightly bent like she was ready to move at any second.

“Milady?” He turned, still slightly dizzy, pulling himself to his knees before standing.

Ladybug eyed him warily before stepping forward. If they hadn’t been fighting together everyday for almost a year, he wouldn’t have noticed that she was tense. But they had. “Y-you wanted to meet?” she started. “I noticed you up here on my way…are you okay?”

He dropped down to the helipad to meet her, approaching her slowly. When he stood before her, Ladybug’s eyes searched his. He idly wondered if she was holding her breath before a boiling urge ripped through him and his hands lifted on their own accord. “Give me your-” his whispered growl began, before it was sharply cut off by Ladybug’s forceful palm to his chest that sent him stumbling backwards.

He gained his footing and looked up to see Ladybug in full battle-stance, yoyo already spinning. “What’s wrong with you, Chat Noir?” she demanded.

And with that, Adrien’s reality broke. He sobbed violently, hugging his arms around his chest. His knees met the helipad and he folded over himself. “I don’t know,” he finally answered in a broken yell, feeling the blood vessels in his face surge as the tears burst forth in torrents.

An overwhelming grief that he couldn’t quite explain consumed him on that rooftop. He hadn’t felt this much sadness at one time since his mother disappeared. Finally, a hand briefly touched his back and he wasn’t sure if it had actually happened until he heard his Lady ask, “Are you akumatized?”

Chat Noir stopped shaking at that question and the fog of his grief started to lift just slightly. He couldn’t be, could he? He’d looked normal all day, hadn’t heard Hawkmoth’s influence, hadn’t had the urge to take any Miraculous until just now… “Could I be akumatized without knowing it?” In a way, he was hoping that this was the answer; she would save him and these feelings would stop, he wouldn’t even remember. But logic and intuition told him that this wasn’t the answer to his newest problem.  
“Not that I know of. Not wreaking havoc or giving you a new superpower doesn’t fit Hawkmoth’s style. What happened, Kitty?” Ladybug tried again, this time fully putting her hand on his back. He could still hear her yoyo going so he raised his waterlogged face to meet her eye. She noticed where he’d been looking and then glanced over their heads. “Akumas,” was all she said and he knew.

A big breath through his mouth and a sniffle later, and he was wiping his face. Resolving that that would be his last slip up of the day, Chat Noir stood tall, looking over their heads, before he turned to his Lady. “Have I ever been akumatized?” he asked her without flinching.

She did, however, and her yoyo-hand faltered making it swing wildly before landing a few feet away with a CLINK. “What?” she breathed, looking like a deer caught in headlights, eyelashes fluttering slightly.

Chat Noir’s heart stuttered but he squared his chest and raised his chin a fraction. “Have I ever been akumatized?” he repeated.

Ladybug finally broke eye contact to retract her yoyo. He didn’t realize he was holding his breath until she met his gaze again. “No, you would remember after I’d save you,” she asserted, also raising her chin slightly before a light smirk graced her lips. “And I’d never let you live it down,” she tried.

But Chat Noir could see the way the playful words didn’t match her eyes; the crease in her brows remained. She had answered him, but the rolling acid in his stomach was back and it was screaming at him to run. When his tight face didn’t change, and he didn’t offer an explanation, her eyes searched his. “Why?” she finally asked.

Chat’s eyes fell as he sighed. Isn’t that what he wanted to know? “I had a dream,” he began. Might as well start at the beginning. “A nightmare, actually. Every time I think about it, it gets further and further away, but all day I’ve been having flashes of it. It’s like the whole world was different, something terrible happened, and I keep feeling like it was real, like it’s coming for me.” 

He looked to see Ladybug’s face scrunched in worry, but wheels were turning in her head. “Flashes of what?”

Her hands were fisted at her sides and Adrien’s vision tunneled. Marinette.

“Y-you’re having flashes of…Multimouse?” Ladybug’s voice was a half octave higher than normal, drawing Chat’s eyes back towards her face. She looked even more concerned than before and he realized he must have said Marinette’s name out loud.

Chat Noir shook his head, trying to bring himself back to reality. If he and Ladybug didn’t figure this out soon, he might just lose his mind. “No, er, maybe? I feel like she was important in the dream, but I don’t really know how; just that in the dream…I loved her.” As the words left his lips, so did all the air from his lungs. That was the first time he’d said it out loud and he couldn’t comprehend the joy and excitement and affection that surged through him in that moment. He wanted to run to the edge of the rooftop and yell to all of Paris that he loved Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

But then Ladybug gasped and the feelings started to dissipate like smoke, much like the rest of his dream. “What else?” Ladybug practically snapped, wrenching him fully from his thoughts of Marinette.  
“Um, uh,” Chat began, feeling nervous. “Paris was destroyed. Flooded. And the moon was broken.”

Ladybug’s eyes go wild at his mention of the moon, closing the distance between them and grabbing him by the shoulders. “Broken how?!” she asks loudly, her voice cracking.

The terror is back, gripping at his heart, clawing up his throat. “Like someone punched a hole in the middle and sliced it in half,” he suddenly remembered the image as if he was looking at it with his own two eyes. But what he was actually looking at were her eyes as tears began to pool on her lashes and spill over as they opened impossibly wider.

“No,” was all she whispered, before stumbling away from him.

**Author's Note:**

> You made it!
> 
> If you're so inclined, drop a comment, even if you hated it! I would love constructive criticism. Right now my sound board is my fiance who is lovely, but he's just...lost when it comes to Miraculous haha. I'd love to know your thoughts!
> 
> For now I am leaving this as a one-shot. But, as I said, I have thought a lot about Chat Blanc and if anything within this timeline spills onto a page, I will be sure to post it here! And I promise I won't forget to tag @dawn-the-rithmatist :)
> 
> Be Kind. Keep each other safe! Make good choices! And most importantly, BLM!!!


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